Free VITTORIO'S MISTRESS (The Vittorio Series) by Kimberley Reeves Page A

hers.   “Forgive me,” he murmured, “I swear I never meant for any of this to happen.   I only came to talk to you, but when I saw you with that man…dressed only in a robe and making arrangements for a date, I wanted to rip his head off.”
    All the anger suddenly went out of her.   “You had no right to be jealous,” Paige said in a subdued tone, “and you had no right to do what you did to me because of it.”
    “You did not fight me,” he reminded her.   “Whether you admit it to yourself or not, you wanted me as much as I wanted you.”
    “Maybe I did,” she replied dully, “but it can never happen again.   Please…put me down.   I want you to go now and I don’t want to see you ever again.”
    Dante’s chest squeezed.   Her words hurt, her emotional withdrawal hurt, finding her with another man hurt.   He hated it that she still had the power to do this to him in spite of the wall he’d so carefully built around his heart.   He let her feet drop to the floor but kept her locked in his arms.   Her hair was a tangled mess, her cheeks flushed, and her lips were swollen from the furious way he’d been kissing her.  
    Looking into her wide, frightened eyes, his anger left him in a rush.   He’d been too rough with her, and that was inexcusable but it did not deter him from the path of revenge he’d chosen.   He didn’t want to hurt Paige physically, on the contrary he wanted to take her to heights she’d never known before.   For that to happen, she’d have to come to him willing and that wasn’t likely to occur if she was afraid of him.
    Dante reached up and gently raked his knuckles down the side of her cheek.   “I am truly sorry for hurting you when I shoved against the door, but I am not sorry for what happened on the porch.   I cannot let you go, cara mia , not when you consume my every waking thought.”
    Tears filled her eyes.   How could she tell him to go away when everything in her would wither and die if he did as she asked?   She wasn’t sorry for happened either, at least not until he’d suddenly gone cold on her and used that horrible emotionless tone of voice.   But maybe, just maybe he’d been as confused by the maelstrom of emotions assaulting him as she’d been.  
    She blinked back the tears.   It didn’t matter, not any of it.   Whatever it was that drove him to it, whatever possessed her to surrender to the madness, it was secondary to the little girl whose life would be turned upside down if Paige allowed this to continue.
    “You have to let me go, Dante.   You have no choice.”
    “No, cara ,” he said softly, “it is you that has no choice.”   He let her go then and stooped to pick up the envelope he’d dropped when he’d come through the door.   Dante pressed it into her shaking hands.   “Read this and you will understand.”
    A sense of foreboding fell over her as she pried the envelope open and pulled out several pieces of paper.   Paige scanned the pages, flipping through them one at a time before returning to the first page and reading through it more slowly.   The bottom fell out of her stomach when she got to the end, not because she understood the ramifications of the documents in her hands but because she didn’t.  
    She looked at him, confused and more than a little apprehensive.   “Why?”
    Dante shrugged.   “I want you.”
    Paige stared at him, dumbfounded by his simple statement.   She held the papers up.   “You honestly think these entitle you to have me?”
    “It is your own fault that I had to resort to such measures,” Dante informed her.   “When you attempted to cut me out of your life I decided I needed to do something that would persuade you to change your mind.”
    “ This is not persuading me,” she waved the papers in front of him, “this is nothing more than blackmail, and for what reason?   Because I turned you down when other women practically throw themselves at you?   Because I